When I pitched watching the new FX show Adults to my gay group chat full of fellow elder millennials, it was met with resistance. One friend said he had grown tired of the genre of shows he referred to as "grown people not getting their act together but it's cute" and another said he just didn't love whiny characters as much as he once did. Then another friend said he felt so many millennials took this behavior as a model for how not to grow up.
Well, guess what, Mimi.
I let the group chat know I related more to the messy 24-year-olds in Adults than I did to the married, home owners in the group chat — which, at 42, really is more of a self-drag than anything else.
That being said, Adults is maybe the most fun I've had watching a show all year — so much so, I have fully binged it twice. It's progressive, it's queer, it's funny, it has a storyline, and it makes fun of itself and its characters constantly, without ever feeling like it's veering towards some "kids these days" bullshit. The show is Broad City meets It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in the best possible way. It's like Girls, if Girls had smoked a shit-ton of weed. In another universe, the titular adults could be from a Happy Endings prequel show. When shows about 20-somethings can make fun of its characters without ever feeling like a Family Guy bit or drunk aunt's Facebook rant, I am always down.
The show's characters are all very big, but still feel like folks you'd meet at a bar in Brooklyn (even though they don't live there). They live in a house out in Queens owned by Samir's (Malik Elassal) traveling parents. Samir is the straight guy — the Jerry Seinfeld of the Seinfeld bunch, but with more anxiety and awkwardness. Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) is the sexually fluid heartthrob made for people to crush on (I'm people). Billie (Lucy Freyer) feels almost the realest — she's the girl you befriended in college who you thought had it together but is actually kind of a fun mess you can get blackout drunk with. Anton (Owen Thiele) is one of the most relatable gay characters I've seen on my screen in a long time; he has ridiculously high standards and doesn't date or do hookups but is a friend slut ("relatable" as in "maybe only I relate"). Then there's the best character, Issa (Amita Rao), who is doing the best Ilana from Broad City drag that I've ever seen — and I do mean that in the most complimentary way. She's basically a cartoon character but still feels real; she's the friend you want to do drugs with. She's the girl you befriend in the bathroom at a gay bar … and then do drugs with. She has some of the best moments in every episode.
The first episode opens with the cast riding the subway, where they encounter a man publicly masturbating. The scene tells you who all the characters are very quickly and is also hilarious. Paul Baker tries to read the man a "you are having a mental health crisis" dialogue he found online, but the last half of it is stuck behind a paywall (a running bit in the show). Issa then challenges him to out masturbate him, yelling how she's been doing it since she was seven. After they exit the subway, Issa regrets her action — the gang assures her it was fine. Billie even insists the man didn't cum, so it's okay — but once Issa is out of earshot, let's the gang know the man had indeed cum and some got on her shoes.
*Cue Seinfeld theme*
The show is able to crack jokes at topics like sexual assault, age gap relationships, gun ownership, drug use, activism and the like without ever taking cheap shots. It has super over the top plotlines — Anton befriending a local stabber, Paul Baker being close friends with Julia Fox (in an A+ cameo), and Charlie Cox playing a high school English teacher going through a divorce — and they all work so well within the semi-cartoony universe of the show. But, to be fair, living in NYC always feels slightly cartoony.
The show has some great running gags too: no hot water, their overflowing mailbox, everyone (including me) loving Paul Baker, Samir being unemployed, Anton's dry spell, paywalls, etc. It also does from the start what later seasons of 30 Rock and Broad City started to do: giving the characters arcs and taking the storylines seriously without losing the comedy aspect. There are some stellar reoccurring character beats too — the way Anton says, "my love" has been randomly popping into my head since I first finished the show.
I've seen so many reviews comparing Adults to Friends — but I'll bravely say that even when it aired when I was a kid, I thought Friends was corny. This show doesn't need to reinvent the damn wheel and that's because it's so whip smart, well-acted, and never corny. The season even ends in a fun way that, upon a rewatch, felt incredibly earned.
I've had two different friends text me to say the dynamic in Samir's house in Queens reminded them of me and my roommate's apartment in Queens that I lived in during and after grad school. So, I'm probably biased — but this first season ended on such a great romantic cliffhanger that I will become a monster and make it everyone else's problem if it doesn't get at least one more season, if not fifty. So, give the show a watch if nothing more than so I can shut up about it.
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